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Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) individuals are often faced with societal challenges that can lead to mental health or substance abuse issues. They may be misunderstood or mistreated when seeking services because of a lack of training in offering culturally sensitive treatment by service providers. A program, the Rainbow Heights Club, was developed to support LGBTQ individuals with a mental health diagnosis. All of the members are in treatment for their mental health and/or substance abuse problems, but prior to the development of the program did not have a place to feel accepted, supported, or have a sense of community. Members were surveyed determine if Rainbow Heights was helpful in maintaining themselves in the community. Results indicated that 75% of members are more consistent in following prescribed treatments, keeping them free from inpatient hospitalization, and 79% reported being clean and sober since coming to the Club.

Background Adolescents account for 1 in 4 sexually transmitted infections (STIs) diagnosed annually in the United States. Many adolescents seek care in emergency departments (ED) for acute medical problems which offers an opportunity to screen for risk behaviors including sexual health. As emergency medicine provider time is focused on the acute medical problem, using technology may be an acceptable and effective alternative to identify and decrease screening risky sexual behaviors. Methods Adolescents aged 13–18 years participated in a randomized controlled trial of an electronic health behavior screening and feedback tool in a pediatric emergency department. All participants were surveyed about risky behaviors at the baseline ED visit and 3 months later, and only intervention arm participants received immediate individualized electronic feedback about their risk behaviors, normative comparisons and brief educational information, including on birth control and condoms. In this secondary analysis, we used Chi-squared analyses to compare differences in 3-month STI risk defined as sexually active and reporting inconsistent condom use. Results A total of 296 adolescents including 55% females enrolled in the study with 72% (n=212) completing the 3 month follow-up survey. At baseline 23% (69/296) reported ever having sex and 67% (46/69) reported using a condom at last sex. At follow-up 16% (17/105) of the intervention group and 23% (25/107) of controls reported having sex in the last 3 months. Of those sexually active, 35% (6/17) of intervention group compared to 56% (14/25) of control group reported not always using condoms in the last 3 months (p=0.19). STI risk at 3 months was 6% (6/105) for intervention participants compared to 13% (14/107) for controls (p=0.07). Conclusion Electronic sexual health screening in the emergency department increases opportunities to assess, identify, and intervene in risky sexual behaviors in adolescents and may contribute to a decrease in risky behaviors. Disclosure No significant relationships.

Social work students placed on a multidisciplinary team will be exposed to diverse ways of interpreting a case, which is an invaluable experience. Placement in a multidisciplinary setting can be an excellent way to engage students in teamwork. Supervisors need to adequately address various aspects in working on a team with students. A survey of 44 bachelor of social work students placed in an internship designed to help them learn about community organizing, program development, or fund-raising revealed that 41 students wanted to better understand the roles of different disciplines in service provision. Although 33 students reported participating in multidisciplinary team meetings and 23 reported discussing working on a team in supervision, less than half (21) reported that they discussed how different disciplines work together to assist clients. This article will discuss the importance of learning to work with other disciplines during training to prepare students for future work in social services.

This chapter discusses some of the critical factors in identifying and providing for the unique needs and services of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT), or sexual minority, client. Many of the ideas that followed in mental health treatment have their roots in the interpretation of moral treatment. Community education of treatment needs of those with mental health problems has long been desired. Professional organizations for physicians, psychologists, and social workers have been promoting culturally competent care in their training and policy directives. The service provider must be able to adapt clinical interventions to help build relationships, make assessments, and provide social work services that acknowledge and celebrate cultural differences. LGBT people have been identified by the United States Department of Health and Human Services as an at-risk population as a result of having social, economic, and environmental disadvantages. Many LGBT clients seek help after being discriminated against at the individual or institutional level.

This two-phase qualitative study explores the experiences of 10 formerly incarcerated LGBT elders' experiences prior to, during, and after release from prison. A core theme of self and the social mirror emerged from the data that represented LGBT elders ongoing coming-out process of unearthing their "true selves" despite managing multiple stigmatized identities or social locations, such as being LGBT, elderly, HIV positive, formerly incarcerated, and a racial/ethnic minority. These findings further our awareness of an overlooked population of LGBT who are older and involved in the criminal justice system. Recommendations that incorporate suggestions from formerly incarcerated LGBT elders for services and policy reform are presented.

To support children with autism in inclusive classrooms, schools are increasingly utilizing paraprofessionals. However, research suggests that paraprofessionals often lack sufficient training and may inadvertently hinder the social interactions between children with disabilities and their peers. This study used a multiple baseline across participants design to empirically investigate whether paraprofessionals could learn to implement social facilitation procedures based on Pivotal Response Treatment. Results indicated that the paraprofessionals learned to utilize the social facilitation procedures with fidelity and generalized the techniques to untrained activities. Furthermore, once the paraprofessionals met the fidelity criteria, decreases in hovering and uninvolved behavior and increases in social facilitation and monitoring were observed. Likewise, the reciprocal social behavior of the children with autism increased rapidly.

This article reports on an original research study about consumer attitudes toward and preferences about their mental health care. It provides empirical findings that demonstrate that deriving information directly from consumers of mental health services offers an important perspective on what services and interventions are necessary to promote psychosocial rehabilitation. Drawing on a research study of self-perception of needs among a sample of 133 consumers diagnosed with serious mental illness and who have been discharged to the community, the findings suggest that consumers view their lives holistically and complexly with an equal concern for their social as well as clinical needs. Engraining consumers as partners in planning treatment is essential if relevant services are to be provided.

This chapter explores LGBT elders with histories of incarceration. Due to the paucity of the literature available on this population, this chapter provides new data from a qualitative study of ten formerly incarcerated LGBT elders’ experiences prior to, during, and after release from prison. Consistent with intersectionality theory, a core theme of self and the social mirror emerged from the data that represented LGBT elders’ ongoing coming out process of unearthing their ‘true selves’ despite managing multiple intersectional stigmatized identities, such as being LGBT, elderly, HIV positive, Reverse order, a member of a racial/ethnic minority, and being formerly incarcerated . These exploratory findings further our awareness of an overlooked population of LGBT elders involved in the criminal justice system. The implications for interprofessional and interdisciplinary policy and practice that incorporate suggestions from the formerly incarcerated LGBT elders for systemic reform are presented .

The authors discuss the use of storybooks to promote multicultural sensitivity among elementary school children. The increasing diversity in the United States dictates that children are sensitive to cultural differences of individuals from varied backgrounds. Because they are in a formative stage of life, children are an ideal population with which to begin teaching about diversity. Los autores discuten el uso de libros de cuentos para promover la sensibilidad multicultural entre ninos de escuela primaria. La diversidad creciente en los Estados Unidos dicta que ninos son sensibles a diferencias culturales de individuos de origen variados. Porque ellos estan en una etapa formativa de la vida, los ninos son una poblacion ideal con que empezar la ensenanza acerca de la diversidad.

Despite improvements in interventions for children with autism, assessments tend to focus on their social, cognitive, and behavioral deficits, without similar systematic examination of their strengths. Strength-based assessment (SBA), which has been used in work with children with milder behavioral disorders, may also have value for individuals who have autism. Although not supplanting usual assessment procedures, SBA provides a method for identifying personal, familial, and broader contextual strengths. Research outside the area of autism has found that SBA can be a useful addition to assessment protocols because it provides specific information on assets that can be incorporated into interventions. Further, SBA has the potential to affect the attitudes and beliefs of parents and educators involved in the assessment, creating greater hope about the ability of the child to function well and contributing to a stronger bond between the assessor, the child, and their family. This article describes ways in which SBA can be added to typical assessment protocols for children with autism. Examples are provided on how to identify and utilize strengths that can be used for planning interventions and for building more effective working relationships between clinicians and children with autism and their families. Areas for future research are also discussed.

This article describes a program developed to support the participation of children with autism in a full-inclusion summer day camp program with their typically developing peers. The goal of the program was to support the children in inclusive summer recreational settings and specifically target their social development with typically developing peers. The program contained the following elements: recruiting appropriate aides, providing the aides with ongoing training and support, creating individualized social and behavioral goals for the campers, developing interventions that were contextually appropriate to the camp settings, and communicating with the families during their participation in the program. This article discusses the relevant child, family, agency, and community issues relevant to the implementation of this program.

Humans construe their environment as composed largely of discrete individuals, which are also members of kinds (e.g., trees, cars, and people). On what basis do young children determine individual identity? How important are featural properties (e.g., physical appearance, name) relative to spatiotemporal history? Two studies examined the relative importance of these factors in preschoolers' and adults' identity judgments. Participants were shown pairs of individuals who looked identical but differed in their spatiotemporal history (e.g., two physically distinct but identical Winnie-the-Pooh dolls), and were asked whether both members in the pair would have access to knowledge that had been supplied to only one of the pairs. The results provide clear support for spatiotemporal history as the primary basis of identity judgments in both preschoolers and adults, and further place issues of identity within the broader cognitive framework of psychological essentialism.